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774Libertarian Theories of Intergenerational JusticeIn Axel Gosseries & Lukas Meyer (eds.), Justice Between Generations, Oxford University Press. 2009.Justice and Libertarianism The term ‘justice’ is commonly used in several different ways. Sometimes it designates the moral permissibility of political structures (such as legal systems). Sometimes it designates moral fairness (as opposed to efficiency or other considerations that are relevant to moral permissibility). Sometimes it designates legitimacy in the sense of it being morally impermissible for others to interfere forcibly with the act or omission (e.g., my failing to go to dinner with …Read more
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52Liberalism and NationalismAnalyse & Kritik 17 (1): 12-20. 1995.Historically, liberal political philosophy has had much to say about who is entitled to nationhood. But it has had rather less to say about how to determine the legitimate territorial boundaries of nations and even less to say about what some such nations, so situated, might owe to others. The object of this paper is to show that the foundational principles of liberalism can generate reasonably determinate solutions to these problems. That is, the very same set of basic rights that liberalism as…Read more
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64The right to trade in human body partsIn Jonathan Seglow (ed.), Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, F. Cass Publishers. pp. 187-193. 2002.This essay challenges the coherence of arguments brought in support of prohibiting the sale of human body parts. Considerations of neither social utility nor individual rights nor avoidance of exploitation seem sufficient to ground such a prohibition. Indeed, they may be sufficient to invalidate it
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38How Free: Computing Personal LibertyRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 15 73-89. 1983.Judgments about the extent to which an individual is free are easily among the more intractable of the various raw materials which present themselves for philosophical processing. On the one hand, few of us have any qualms about making statements to the effect that Blue is more free than Red. Explicitly or otherwise, such claims are the commonplaces of most history textbooks and of much that passes before us in the news media. And yet, good evidence for the presence of a philosophical puzzle her…Read more
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80Silver spoons and golden genes: Talent differentials and distributive justiceIn David Archard & Colin M. Macleod (eds.), The Moral and Political Status of Children, Oxford University Press. pp. 183--194. 2002.There is an important distinction between a person's ’initial genetic endowment’ and his ’post‐conception inputs’ such as nutrition and education. From a left‐libertarian perspective that views persons as self‐owning, children have an enforceable claim that parents should provide adequate ’post‐conception’ inputs. Moreover, with the revolution in genetic science, it is now possible to effect genetic changes without altering identity. If so, children can, in principle, claim a right against ’gene…Read more
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108Debate: Universal self-ownership and the fruits of one's labour: A reply to curchinJournal of Political Philosophy 16 (3): 350-355. 2008.No Abstract
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35Persons of Lesser Value Moral Argument and the 'Final Solution'Journal of Applied Philosophy 12 (2): 129-141. 1995.For many persons, ‘Holocaust‐abomination’is a fixed point on their moral compass: if anything can be evil, it was. Yet at least one of the justifications deployed by its perpetrators (the eugenics argument) invokes widely‐held values concerning human health and procreation. Hence persons endorsing many current activities based on those values (e.g. genetic counselling) have been charged with being on a morally deplorable slippery slope. This paper sketches the necessary structure of a moral posi…Read more
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89Liberalism, neutrality and exploitationPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 12 (4): 335-344. 2013.This essay argues that a liberalism that avoids legal moralism – that is neutral between rival conceptions of the good – cannot embrace intervention in commercial transactions, but is thereby precluded neither from identifying some such transactions as exploitative nor from redressing them by other means
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94Greed and FearPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 13 (2): 140-150. 2014.This essay argues that the proffered grounds for Cohen's rejection of market relations – that they are sustained by the base motives of greed and fear – are unsound and also unnecessary to explain the maximising behaviour induced by those relations
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14 ResponsesIn Stephen De Wijze, Matthew H. Kramer & Ian Carter (eds.), Hillel Steiner and the Anatomy of Justice: Themes and Challenges, Routledge. pp. 16--235. 2009.
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40The Origins of Left Libertarianism: An Anthology of Historical Writings (edited book)Palgrave Publishing. 2000.This book contains the historically most important discussions of the philosophical foundations of left-libertarianism. Like the more familiar right-libertarianism (such as that of Nozick), left-libertarianism holds that agents own themselves (and thus owe no service the others expect as the result of voluntary action). Unlike right-libertarianism, however, left-libertarianism holds that natural resources are owned by the members of society in some egalitarian manner, and may be appropriated onl…Read more
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15Jean-Guillaume-César-Alexandre-Hippolyte de Colins (1783-1859), a Belgian baron who lived mainly in Paris, sought to develop a position—rational socialism—intermediate between the extremes of full capitalism (with only private property) and full communism (with only collective property). All persons fully own themselves and the artifactual wealth that they produce, and they are entitled to an equal share of the natural resources and of the assets inherited from previous generations. Gifts and be…Read more
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41Human rights and the diversity of valueCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 15 (4): 395-406. 2012.This paper argues that the independence from intercultural disagreement, that Peter Jones attributes to human rights, implies that those rights are best understood as modelled on the Will Theory of rights and are derived from each person’s foundational right to equal (negative) freedom.
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22Duty-Free ZonesProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 96 (1). 1996.Hillel Steiner; X*—Duty-Free Zones, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1 June 1996, Pages 231–244, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelia.
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4Original rights and just redistributionIn Peter Vallentyne & Hillel Steiner (eds.), Left Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate, Palgrave Publishers. pp. 74--121. 2000.
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21A Debate over RightsMind 109 (436): 954-956. 2000.The authors of this book engage in essay form in a lively debate over the fundamental characteristics of legal and moral rights. They examine whether rights fundamentally protect individuals' interests or whether they instead fundamentally enable individuals to make choices. In the course of this debate the authors address many questions through which they clarify, though not finally resolve, a number of controversial present-day political debates, including those over abortion, euthanasia, and …Read more
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249Left Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate (edited book)Palgrave Publishers. 2000.This book contains a collection of important recent writing on left-liberalism, a political philosophy that recognizes both strong liberty rights and strong ...
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Kant's KelsenianismIn Richard Tur & William L. Twining (eds.), Essays on Kelsen, Clarendon Press. pp. 65--75. 1986.
Manchester, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
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